Date:         Tue, 12 Nov 96 07:23:33 EST
From: "T R. Young" <34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Organization: Central Michigan University
Subject:       (fwd)
To: GRADUATE STUDENTS IN SOCIOLOGY <SOCGRAD@CSF.COLORADO.EDU>
Message-Id:   <961112.072549.EST.34LPF6T@CMUVM.CSV.CMICH.EDU>
Addendum to the mini-lecture on Teaching...I had not known Steve would

AHS/PSN --

T.R. Young asked that I post something from a presentation on teaching that
I did at the Humanist Sociology meetings in Hartford.  I also thought they
were great meetings; they always are.

I talked about teaching a class on peace and a class on American society
with no tests and almost no lecturing.  That left the question of what to do
instead.  When written work is due (writeups on readings or personal
application or humor assignments) I try to get students talking about the
work they have done.  One time we dug up quotations on the material; during
the next class period we met in groups and ranked the ones we most and least
liked.  Sometimes this works best the day it is due and sometimes the next
class, after I have looked over the writings.

Often we break into groups with groups asked to answer a set of questions
before reconvening.  On occasion we will do free writing on an aspect of the
materials, particularly if it invites personal application.  The same holds
for guided meditation.  Once in a while I will ask students to put their
heads down and listen, and I will do a sort of guided meditation on
materials admitting of personal application for 15 minutes or so.

A quasi-lecture activity (as guided meditation can be) has been to divide
into groups, with each working filling in the blanks on a sheet that
contains a bare-bones outline of lecture materials.  In other words I type
in some of the material but leave some key words blank or half-filled in and
eventually give clues as needed.  When some of the groups are beginning to
gut stuck we go over the sheet and I provide further clues (in effect
playing hangman or hang-the-class) until we have assimilated the material.

A variation on dividing into groups is "concentric circles," (borrowed from
the Alternatives to Violence Prisons project and others) in which half of
the (small) class sits on chairs in a circle (facing out) and half on chairs
across from them.  Each person talks on a topic I give for two minutes.
Then we rotate chairs and move on to a related topic, several times.

A lead-in to discussion or free writing that I adapted from a book called
_Playfair_ by Matt Weinstein and Joel Goodman is to give students singly or
in groups a series of forced choice metaphors to choose from.  Is human
nature more like bumper boats or spilt mercury?  An elastic waistline or a
pair of handcuffs?  Is peacemaking more like a marathon or a community
hoedown?  Etcetera.

Charades proved to be a good way to process a couple of lists of types of
fallacies and propaganda ploys (bandwagon, ad hominem etc.), once students
read the material carefully.  We processed material on privacy by going out
and interviewing another person or two from a survey prepared by me, before
meeting back in class for discussion.


After a unit on advertising I asked students to work in groups with a sheet
of several scenarios, making up their own ad.  The scenarious included
making an ad targeted at advertising/media people like the ones we had
viewed in _How to Succeed in Advertising_ and _Network_; writing an ad for a
product for people concerned that our culture shortens attention spans and
makes people hostile to conceptualization [this after a talk on Marcuse,
Aronowitz, et al.]; writing an ad or some public relatinos for a tobacco
company or the CIA but with the hitch that the writers have taken a drug
that requires them to be honest; an ad for someone without insecurities.

Finally, I keep a collection of social commentary cartoons.  One day we will
pore over a bunch (some are assigned reading in other classes) and then I'll
talk about how to think them up and will ask pairs of students to generate
some of their own in class.

--Steve McGuire